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The people who emailed me about this were mostly self-treating or using
alternative medicine.  It makes me wonder what happens if you take
problems like mine, reacting to almost all commonly eaten foods, to a
gastroenterologist.  Do they just think you're nuts?  Would they be able
to do anything about it?

There's nothing subtle about my reactions.  I get sick about 4 hours after
eating the food, feeling woozy.  I'm sick at home the following day.  I
get back pain, sugar cravings, excessive appetite, red eyes, itching,
postnasal drip.  It slowly fades out in about 4 days.  The egg white made
me sick for 6 days.

A lot of people think that having food intolerances means they still have
intestinal damage.  This isn't true AFAIK.  Antibodies linger on in your
intestines for a long time.  It just takes years for the body to stop
making the antibodies.  Probably the same thing is true for fructose
intolerance - if it comes from subtle damage to villi as I was told, it
ought to go away pretty quickly once you stop causing inflammation by
eating things you have immune reactions to.

People suggested HCl and digestive enzymes and probiotics.  I don't know
if any of my enzymes are low, I don't know a doctor can check that?  They
said those things help prevent developing new reactions:

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I am down to about a dozen
foods right.  I just lost the ability to tolerate mangos and hazelnuts.
The beginning of my intolerances started with a reaction to a tetanus
shot triggering achlorhydria(no stomach acid).  Between the onset and
diagnosis(4 years) I lost tolerance to most foods and the grains, dairy,
nuts, legumes, meats and seeds groups, tolerating only turkey, deer, elk
and crab and macadamia nuts.  I have 3 vegies I can eat and a few more
fruits than that.  Since beginning a regime of HCl plus pepsin with all
meals, new food intolerances have slowed way down.  This may apply to
you.  Also something I just read was that low IgA levels and food
intolerances go hand-in-hand so right now I am working to improve that
level.

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I'm sure, with me getting sick for days from these foods, that enzymes/HCl
are not going to make it possible for me to tolerate foods I've
been reacting to.  It's normal for some food proteins to get into the
blood, so enzymes or whatever are not going to be breaking up the food
completely.  But if I start developing new reactions, these things might
help.  Except for flax I think, everything I react to is something I was
eating before going gluten free.

I've had alot of my food intolerances/allergies since i was about 12.
I got "hypoglycemic" at about 12.  I think I've probably been gluten
intolerant my whole life.  I got a chronic reappearing illness at about
20, I was sick about 6 weeks/year from it for decades - which was from
hidden food intolerances.

It's funny, but there were many foods that caused me these "hypoglycemic"
reactions - anxiety, adrenaline jitters, hostility, tension, hunger -
after eating.  When I was 12 carrots were like that.  They have a very
high glycemic index, and they would just make me hungry.  I would eat
lots and lots of carrots.  Now I realize carrots are one of my food
intolerances!  Corn, peas, kidney beans, soy were like that.

It's not that those "hypoglycemic" reactions are actually allergic
reactions to specific foods.  Maple syrup and honey, which I don't have
an allergy/intolerance to, used to also cause me those reactions.  Having
the "hypoglycemic" reaction depends on the food having a fair amount of
carbohydrates in it.

A lot of people asked me "what do you eat, then?"  Well, since
I have actually spent a lot of energy in the last few months hunting up
new foods, checking that they aren't related to a common allergen - I put
together a list of what I *can* eat.
http://www.lightlink.com/lark/exotic.html
Everything on this list would be on an exotic-foods elimination diet,
unless it's a food you eat a fair amount.  All of the top 20 food
allergens that I have tried, I react to!  I can't eat bananas.  Bananas
are hypoallergenic so far as IgE reactions go, but I read they are
allergenic for non-IgE food reactions.

It's very stressful going through this, a lot of people mentioned that.  I
spend more time shopping that I used to, hunting down strange South
American roots etc.  I had to return a lot of foods to the grocery store,
it's nerve-wracking.  It is onerous having only a limited number of foods
to eat.  I have been sick for months with food challenges.

I got a lot of alternative explanations for my food reactions - I might be
reacting to pesticides, or not having protein reactions.  These other
explanations aren't consistent with the pattern of my reactions - apples
make me sick for days, for example - but quince and pears, which are
related to apples, don't.  I can eat unpeeled fruit.  I react to things
that I used to eat before going gluten-free, with a few exceptions.  It
seems that my body developed intolerances to other foods just like most
gluten intolerant people do - only in astonishing, splendiferous (NOT(
variety.

I have a corn reaction to tiny amounts and one can locate tiny traces of
corn in just a huge number of foods.  I doubt that's the problem though,
for the same reason.  What I react to is foods I ate before being gf.
I've done fine with strange foods, whether pesticide-sprayed or not ...

People suggested alternative kinds of allergy testing.  I never really saw
the point.  I got a little IgE RAST testing just to check whether these
are IgE reactions and they're not.  You're supposed to check tests for
other kinds of antibodies with an elimination diet and food challenges.
So you have to do the elimination/challenges process anyway.  I did pretty
well figuring out what to eliminate just by not eating the top 20 food
allergens.

A lot of people said Candida overgrowth was part of their problem, somehow
causing food intolerances.  Researchers have
checked Candida levels, probably in the colon, in people who think they
have Candida overgrowth and they don't have more than average.  People
might be having an immune reaction to Candida, it's allergenic stuff.  I
actually have an IgE allergy to Candida.  My guess is that yeast in food
I eat affects me more than my intestinal Candida.  I was getting awful
rashes for a while this spring, apparently from dates.  Dates are dried
fruit so they have a lot of yeast.  But I don't have a dieoff reaction
when I kill the Candida with supplements.  So far as directly causing
allergic reactions - yeast in food seems more important than intestinal
Candida for me.

Things people do to reduce Candida may help for other reasons.  Like a
low-sugar diet.  If you reduce sugar, it'll reduce fructose, and lots of
gluten intolerant people are fructose intolerant.  I try to get my carbs
from starches more than sugars; starch is a glucose polymer and glucose
doesn't cause the problems that fructose does.

Laura

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